Walking Dead Season Five: The Last Survivor
by xxEmber24xx
Summary: After a long and arduous journey with Clementine from Telltale's The Walking Dead, our favourite survivor's epic tale has come to a - canonical - end. This is my take on what happened next. With the wars still waging between communities, what fate awaits the kids of Ericson's? Will Clementine lead them to peace and prosperity, or will they too be subject to the raw reality of the


Everything extraordinary was suddenly so routine in an apocalyptic world.

Five year-old with a gun? If he could wield it so well as not to shoot the next person over, then this was suitable. Protection like firearms was scarce these days (or the ammo which nourished them was) and it was a blessing to even have.

Seven children under the care and guardian of one sixteen year-old with a second grader's education? She was a natural born leader. She had more scars than most at the age which she was; the left foot was gone from the mid-shin down, and the left arm was noted with having a messy, verbose and jagged disfigurement from a dog's teeth on its forearm. Additionally, there was the fact that her ring finger - on the same, maltreated left half of her body - had been severed from the first joint and up after it was slammed in a car door years before and thusly removed. A small pock-mark from where a bullet had once entered through her shoulder and out the back could be witnessed in more sparse attire, which it rarely ever was.

This was the world now. This was the world how it had been for eight or so years, and how it would continue to be until there were no more walkers left.

"Dammit!"

Violet's fourth and final shot with Clementine's compound bow sailed defiantly past the slowly swaying target and buried itself promptly in the sand nearby the tree behind it. Similarly, there were two more arrows near to it; the remaining ammunition, and the only shot to make its mark, was embedded in the outer ring of the target, though just barely.

"That was good, Vi. One out of four. That's twenty five percent."

"Oh, great. So the other three walkers won't have to split me four ways."

Clementine saddled Violet with a skeptical look. She was leaned sideways on a lone crutch, a safe distance from the balky shooter while close enough to observe the pitiful scene. "It's progress is what I mean. Last time, you couldn't even hit the target."

Ericson's de facto leader was a smallish African-American girl with shaggy black hair tied neatly back in a recently trimmed ponytail, her arms covered by a scrubby denim jacket with their sleeves rolled to her elbows. The left pant leg was tied around where the rest of her foot might ordinarily protrude - only, there was no foot. Besides the fact, she got around well. Her honey-brown eyes were set affectionately on the shooter, who was a section taller than her, blonde with a vest, blue-green eyes and a sailor's tongue. She dumped the compound bow on the ground.

"Progress, yeah. I think I'm gonna take a break," Violet mumbled. "Anyway, I'm on watch soon, so I should probably go be ready for that."

"C'mon, Vi," Clementine prompted. "Your shift isn't for another hour yet."

"I'm tired, Clem." Violet waved her off. "I'll see you after, okay? Promise."

As she turned to leave, abandoning Clementine to stare after her with a despondent degree of longing, her presence was shortly replaced by one other, familiar face. Alvin Junior, affectionately termed 'AJ', arrived from behind Clementine. He was smallish, five years-old, African-American and dark, with a plume of curly, voluminous black hair, jeans too short, and an old baggy grey shirt.

"Clem?" he asked, curiously peering to read the expression on Clementine's face. "Are you okay?"

"What?" The query had taken her by surprise. "Of course. Why would you ask that?"

AJ contemplated the response, but diverted any further discourse on the matter. "I was curious about something. Can I talk to you?"

"Sure thing, goofball." Anything was better than pouring over Violet's curt attitude, and there was seldom a time where Clementine did not want to be with the little boy. She followed him on her crutch over to the cellar where (after a period of clean-up following the last incident that had transpired down in its pits with Brody and Marlon) they now stocked their non-perishables, various ammunition, supplies of any useful sort. While she leaned up against the rock cropping next to it, AJ sat down cross-legged. He was fiddling with something - a pale pink origami swan - between his fingers, which Clementine guaranteed had been fixed together by Ruby, or Violet.

"Aasim was talking to Ruby earlier and I overheard something," AJ started, thoughtfully.

Oh boy. Clementine apprehended the worst; lately there were zero limits between those two. They were thick as thieves ever since the return from the Delta and the boat.

"They were talking about their parents, Clem. From before - before comin' to the school, I think. Their mom, and their dad. And they were talking about how much they missed them - how they didn't know what happened to them after the monsters came, and how sad it was that they wouldn't ever know. But - you know what happened to my mom and dad. Right, Clem? Because you were with them before I was born."

The breath was nearly knocked right out of Clementine's chest. How lucky was she that they had gotten this far without that question ever making its appearance, but somehow she had always known it would make an appearance someway, and somehow. Despite this, by hook or crook she had never mustered a means to respond, and quickly discovered herself groping for appropriate words on the spot.

"I do," she started, "and I don't know if it's going to do you any good to hear, AJ. Do you really want to know?"

"I think so."

"Right." Clementine inhaled sharply, closing her eyes for a moment. The soft wilderness air had a tone of bite to it, implicating the coming of winter. Since it had been three months after the incident with the Delta, the cold was coming on them fast. It was a bad sign for gathering and hunting, but it also meant that the walkers would go slow, and the communities round them would be less and less active. No one could travel by river, anyhow, and that was something.

"Your mom's name was Rebecca, and your dad was Alvin. Your dad, Alvin, he was - he helped me, on a few occasions. After I got bit by that dog, and the group they were a part of decided to lock me in their shed for good measure, I decided to fix myself. He managed to find me some bandages, for my arm. Your mom, however, didn't trust me. I don't blame her. A strange kid, showing up out of nowhere with a bite wound on her arm? And the fact that, at the time, she was pregnant with you.

I tried not to be too short with her. I was tired, and hurt, and I didn't know anyone - I was scared. Later, she apologized to me for being harsh. Which...was nice. She was a good woman, and she was scared for you."

"Scared for me?" asked AJ, whose eyes had not once left Clementine since she had started to speak, and only now intercepted. "How could she be scared for me when I wasn't even born?"

"Raising a child was probably hard enough before the walkers came. I think she was worried that you wouldn't have a proper life, or a life at all, with everything that was happening. Everyone was scared. After that, when I joined the group, we were taken by this - this bad man. A real bad man. His name was Carver, and he wanted to hurt us. He was the one who killed your dad."

AJ was uncharacteristically silent.

"I should stop," Clementine inclined. She did not want to give the boy nightmares.

"No, please don't. What happened to my mom?"

"After she had you, we were going north. Where it was cold, and snowy," Clementine explained in a despondent murmur. "It was hard for her to have you. She wasn't prepared. So, when she did, it hurt her - a lot. She went to sleep in the snow, and she didn't wake up."

"Did she-?"

"I made sure she didn't." Clementine's gaze softened. "Your mom once said she was glad I'd be there to watch out for you. I don't think that, at the time, she knew what that meant. Even though I wish she was still here to see you grow, I know she probably would be happy that you're safe now. And so would your dad."

There was another silent, thoughtful period of contemplation. AJ was staring deeply at the origami swan between his fingers, which had crinkled a little over the course of the discussion, before finally inhaling deep and turning to look up meditatively at Clementine.

"Are you sad about this?" Clementine asked curiously.

"Not really," AJ responded. "I don't think so. 'Cause I never knew them. Mostly everyone here knew their parents and lost them, but I lost them and didn't know them. And I feel sad when people die that I knew, but I don't remember my mom. Just you."

"You're - sure? Because we can talk about this more..."

"No, it's okay. Do you feel sad about your parents?"

"I..." Clementine considered that. "Yes, sometimes. But I know what happened to my parents, and some kids never got that. Somehow, that makes it easier."

"You saw them, right?"

"AJ, you are allowed to feel things," Clementine inclined quickly, surfacing over the matter. "Alright? Whether that's sad, that's mad, that's being scared."

"But don't we say 'fuck off' to fear?"

"Well - yes. But you can still _feel_ it, okay? It doesn't make you any less tough. In fact, it probably would make those feelings go away faster."

For the remainder of that day, AJ remained that way: quiet, contemplative. Clementine wondered if telling him now had been the right thing, and continued to gruel over the matter well into the evening, during supper, after, and even while she lay in her bed listening to the boy's soft snores tucked away against her arm. It was a wild thought: was it better this way, that AJ never had to feel the grief of losing his parents, or was it strange that he was indifferent? Over the course of the apocalypse, Clementine had lost about everyone who she ever cared for in some manner, or some way.

That night, she dreamed.

She dreamed about her parents.


End file.
